Senator Panfilo Lacson said on Saturday he would scrutinize the Philippine National Police's use of its taxpayer-funded hospital for high-profile detainees, questioning what he called a familiar pattern of influential figures being hospitalized just as arrest warrants are served.

Lacson spoke as former Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan and Senator Rodante Marcoleta remained confined at the Philippine National Police General Hospital following their arrest on Sandiganbayan-issued warrants in a plunder case involving alleged anomalies in government flood control projects. Bonoan also faces graft charges.

"Since time immemorial, when a prominent personality is cited in contempt or faces arrest, he or she suddenly gets sick and needs to be hospitalized," Lacson said in a radio interview, arguing that the phenomenon has become so common that many Filipinos now expect it whenever powerful officials face detention.

The former police chief, now serving his second stint in the Senate, said the issue was no longer simply about the medical conditions of detainees but about public accountability.

"The PNP General Hospital is funded by taxpayers and is intended for PNP personnel and their dependents," he said. "Who is paying for the confinement and medication of Bonoan and Marcoleta? As far as I know, neither of them are PNP dependents."

Lacson said he would raise the matter during Senate deliberations on the proposed 2027 budgets of the PNP and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, seeking a full accounting of who is authorized to use the facility and who bears the cost when non-beneficiaries are admitted.

He also questioned reports that some police personnel and their qualified dependents had been unable to secure admission because of limited hospital capacity while non-police detainees were being accommodated.

The senator's comments echoed a social media post he made on 8 July, where he mocked what he described as the recurring emergence of medical ailments after the issuance of arrest warrants.

"When the arrest warrant comes out, so does the medical condition," Lacson wrote, listing illnesses ranging from pneumonia and hypertension to chronic back pain.

Marcoleta has remained under police custody at the PNP hospital after doctors diagnosed him with mild pneumonia, fluctuating blood pressure and degenerative disc disease. The Sandiganbayan has directed the PNP to submit regular medical reports while allowing his continued confinement at the facility.

Bonoan, meanwhile, was placed under hospital arrest after his lawyers cited several medical conditions, including hypertension and diabetes.

Court filings later disclosed that he also suffered a heart attack following his arrest and underwent medical procedures before the anti-graft court granted his request for continued confinement at the PNP hospital.

Lacson said the practice was not new, recalling that former senator Juan Ponce Enrile was also confined at the PNP hospital while facing charges over the pork barrel scam more than a decade ago. 

He noted, however, that Enrile had previously served as defense secretary when the Philippine Constabulary—the predecessor of the PNP—was still under the Department of National Defense.

Whether the current admissions comply with the hospital's mandate, Lacson said, is a question Congress should answer.

"I intend to ask who is authorized to be confined there and who shoulders the expenses when those admitted are not PNP personnel or their dependents," he said.